The death of Queen Elizabeth II this month, prompting a massive outpouring of grief in the UK and much pomp (10 days of ceremonial events before the state funeral), resonated in Spain and put its monarchy, restored after the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975, in the limelight.
The monarchies of England (and later the UK) and Spain have been linked since the 12th and 13th centuries when King Alfonso VIII of Castile married Eleanor Plantagenet in 1170 and King Edward I of England married Leonor of Castile in 1254. Both countries were briefly brought closer together again in the 16th century when King Henry VIII married Catalina of Aragon in 1509 (later annulled) and Mary Tudor (‘Bloody Mary’) married Felipe II in 1554. Alfonso XIII, the great-grandfather of Spain’s current monarch, King Felipe VI, married one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (‘Queen Ena’ or Victoria Eugenia), in 1906. Queen Elizabeth was the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, while Felipe is the great-great-great-grandson of that Queen who died in 1901. He affectionately addressed Queen Elizabeth as ‘Aunt Lilibet’.
King Juan Carlos I, a 3rd cousin of Queen Elizabeth who abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son Felipe, and Queen Sofía made a state visit to the UK in 1986, followed by a similar visit to Spain by Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1988. The abdication and the future of the Spanish monarchy greatly concerned Queen Elizabeth,…
